1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to testing in-home coaxial cable, Ethernet communications over coaxial cable, high speed data over twisted pair, video over internet protocol (IPTV) packet level monitoring, and set top box (STB) monitoring. More particularly, the invention relates to hardware and firmware additions to MoCA, HPNA, and G.hn chipsets, and a software (SW) application which is added to existing equipment that provides aggregation of data obtained from the existing customer premise equipment (CPE) such as the residential gateway (comprising a modem or modem function and a router or router function), and STB and adds metallic cable testing. The unique combination of data sources allows faster and more accurate analysis of service impairments than can be achieved by each separate source of data.
2. Description of Related Art
In-home (residential) local area networks (LAN) have been increasing the data bandwidth to speeds such that impairments either on or in combination with the physical, equipment, or service layers can render the home network unreliable for applications such as IPTV or VoIP. Test and diagnostics data is available from each of these layers that help identify impairments. However, this data provides a singular view of the impairments that occur within the LAN, and in many cases additional data is needed before identification, location, and resolution of impairments can be determined.